


A Rubber Ball Between Two Walls

by AmateurScribes



Series: Whumptober 2019 [11]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Graphic Description of Injury, Medical Procedures, Past Injuries, Past Violence, Prompt Fic, Stabbing, Stitches, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 13:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20995592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/pseuds/AmateurScribes
Summary: Others would find it miraculous to have such a low tolerance for pain or the ability to never truly get injured.Grif would call these people goddamnmorons.





	A Rubber Ball Between Two Walls

**Author's Note:**

> This entire week has caught up to me and I started falling asleep in the middle of writing this, haha! So sorry if it doesn't make all that much sense, I'm off to go take a super long nap and get back all the sleep I missed this past week.
> 
> For the duration of this event, all mistakes are my own.

Grif's been hurt a lot in his pitiful years of life. No matter how many times he got knocked down, he just came back up- well, after taking advantage of lying down for as long as he could before he  _ had _ to get up.

The point was though, that Grif knew how to take a hit. Knew how to work through the pain until you could find the right moment to collapse.

And he's gotten used to unconventional ways of healing.

When he was younger, he didn't typically get into any sort of fights. Especially not with other students at school- that was just a lot of wasted effort, and carrying grudges was an exhausting thing to do anyhow.

But when it came to Kai, he ended up getting into a lot of fights with guys who thought that they could just take advantage of her. 

It just so happened that one time, one of the assholes who wanted to get into her pants had a knife on him.

And then the knife had been  _ in _ Grif, and quickly pulled out again, the bastard nowhere to be seen.

Grif didn't have enough money to get the wound treated at a hospital or clinic. And he knew something like this couldn't very well  _ kill _ him, not even if he wanted it to.

So he dragged himself back to the run-down shack that he called a house, went to the cookie tin and opened it, eyeing all the different needles and thread.

It couldn't have been all  _ that _ hard to sew himself back up, would it? 

He was very wrong, his hands shook as he tried and failed repeatedly to thread the needle, and then when he finally did it- trying it off to boot- he braced himself against the ratty couch in the living room.

Grif wanted to get drunk, wanted to take  _ something _ so that he wouldn't have to feel any of the pain.

But he was already losing blood at what he's pretty sure was an alarming rate, so he wasn't too keen on replacing most of his blood with alcohol instead.

So as lucid as he was despite having a knife in him, he brought the needle close to his lower stomach where the asshole had aimed, pinched the skin so that was protruding and thus made it easier to see two separate 'sides' to it, and plunged the thin metal stick into himself.

Pressing his lips tightly he grunted in pain, except that the sound he made lasted a good while, and it was more like muffled screaming than anything else.

He had tried his best not to squirm at the uncomfortable feeling of a thread being pulled through his body, but he sat through it until the first stitch was done completely.

There wasn't time to give himself some sort of mental break, even as he panted with exertion and blood loss.

Positioning the needle, he pointed it in the other direction and repeat the process, just as agonizing as the first time he did it, not a second ago.

Things were easier if they were done mindlessly and automatically. That's what he was banking on as he did his best to methodically go back and forth with the needle, closing up the gaping cut, hands getting drenched in his own blood as he brought his hands and fingers close to the cut.

Vaguely, as his hand moved back and forth not really thinking on the movement, he wondered if he should have made sure to clean the cut first. Make sure that he wouldn't get infected or anything like that.

But he figured that he could just pour alcohol on the wound after the fact, and if he got seriously ill due to an infection, then he could blame it on the blood loss.

It wasn't long before he had reached the end of the wound, and he tied off the thread and then cut it to free the needle.

He was still bloody as all hell, and it was when he stood up, aiming to go to the bathroom to wash himself off that he blacked out.

And woke up in a hospital bed, despite the very obvious and plain sentiment that he would rather die than go to one of these being very apparent to everyone he knew. 

Grif wondered who fucking snitched about the stab wound, someone who must have known him and witnessed the whole thing. He wanted to give  _ that _ person some stitches of their own.

But then he noticed the sleeping form of Kai by his bedside, and he figured out rather quickly who it must have been that called for an ambulance.

And when she woke up she yelled at him for scaring her like that- she had just walked in to witness his unconscious and bloody body lying about on the floor- and she took it a step further to call him stupid for not going to the hospital in the first place.

Grif lets her say all of it, he knows that she's understandably worried and lashing out at the only person she could in her general vicinity- Grif- but when he gets a chance to look at the bill for his stay at the hospital- two whole days- and the price of the  _ ambulance _ he wishes that he had reprimanded her.

But money was never Kai's problem- it was something that Grif took upon himself when he finally got the hint that their mother was very much a no-good deadbeat, and that they were better off without her dirty money.

So he never said anything to her, just worried about how the hell he was going to pay that off along with everything else.

And of course, because what else could be expected of his luck, he ended up getting an infection after all due to the way that he had stitched himself up.

Even when he tried, nothing ended up going his way, so why bother trying at all?

And that's the day that he can't help but think back to as he stared at himself in the mirror.

Grif's body ached and it hurt, and vaguely he can feel how off-balance he feels, the unnaturalness of Simmons' limbs on his own body. 

And he just stares at the freshly inserted stitches outlining the places where the two separate pieces connect.

He feels like he has unwillingly become Frankenstein monster, and he feels an inclination to just go out and destroy something- maybe Blue Team's tank, or maybe just that asshole Tucker himself-

Grif's very angry, but just like Kai, he wants to blow up at all the wrong people. Shit just happened sometimes, and he would have to deal with that.

But he thinks that maybe Sarge should have taken a course in sowing or something because even as a teen Grif had a better knack for the damn hobby than his superior did.

The stitches were horrible, uneven,  _ ugly _ as if Grif couldn't become any more undesirable.

He supposes that he should be grateful, that they decided to save his life after all. And maybe on a different day, he'd look back on this event and think about how unlike Sarge and the others it had been to save his life. That despite all the jokes and threats towards his life, maybe somewhere deep down they all cared about each other after all.

But Grif's not in a good mood, in fact, he's utterly furious as he looked in the mirror. Because he thinks about how many layers had to be put between Grif and his life, and that Sarge really didn't trust him enough to give him the cybernetic parts, and that instead, Simmons  _ also _ had to undergo surgery and-

He doesn't really like his reflection at the moment.

Grif thinks about pulling a Simmons, thinks about how easy it would be to pull back his first and just embedded his knuckles into the glass of the mirror.

But he doesn't, because that would require him to raise his arm, and he's very tired and lethargic after all.

So he doesn't.

Grif does imagine what would happen if he did though, but at the thought of different voices yelling at him for destroying the mirror, he's reassured that it was a stupid impulse that he's glad he didn't act upon.

Nothing will solve the conundrum of his reflection, at least not until years later when he's gotten so used to it and his new misshapen body, and that imagining himself without the white blotches of skin would actually be more cause for concern than without.

Grif should have died underneath the power and force of a tank. There's no reasonable explanation for why he's alive. Or how. 

What he wants to know the most is the why. Who the fuck just finds messing with him and his life all so hilarious that they made a whole show out of it? The universe has a funny way of playing jokes on people.

He should have  _ died. _

But Grif always seemed to bounce back.

**Author's Note:**

> I can't imagine how much physical pain that Grif must go through all the time on this show, the poor dudes constantly getting hit even when he's down.
> 
> If you'd like to chat, you can find me at either of my Tumblr's: @agent-murica (main) and @amateurscribes (writing)!


End file.
